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Path: utzoo!watmath!djhawley
From: djhawley@watmath.UUCP (David John Hawley)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Stranger in a Strange Land
Message-ID: <6294@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 11-Dec-83 21:19:48 EST
Article-I.D.: watmath.6294
Posted: Sun Dec 11 21:19:48 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 12-Dec-83 04:48:21 EST
References: <4014@rochester.UUCP>, <534@ut-sally.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 35

It's been a long time since I've read SIASL, so I'm not sure if I
understand what Heinlein was pushing. However, if it matches up with
eastern pantheistic monism (everything is one), then I have a great
distaste for it. 

********* (SOMEWHAT) FLAME ON *********

My understanding of this category of "religions"
(better, "world-views"), from reading and from discussions with a friend
who is so inclined (Sufi), is that they are fundamentally 
anti-rational (not just arational) and anti-moral.
With regard to the latter adjective, I mean a disagreement with the concepts
of right-and-wrong, together with a confusion about goals.
What does "hurt" mean, when what we experience is largely illusion ?
And helping someone towards the ultimate goal of realization of union
with the non-sentient, amoral, apersonal infinite is not what a Western mind
would conceive as "helping". I am deliberately looking at this from
a Western world-view (or at least what I think is a W w-v).

That is not to say, of course, that proponents of this world-view
are amoral or arational necessarily. People are sometimes wiser than
their beliefs.

****** FLAME OFF ******

I would like some further explanation of some of the "unobvious"
implications (like morality) from someone who knows more about
the Eastern modes of thought. Someone who is still willing to explain
and discuss, even if (s)he doubts the utility thereof.

Sorry if this is a bit abrasive, but it really gets my goat when someone
paints what I consider naively glowing pictures of "universalism". I
really am interested in knowing more, even if I don't agree. Curiosity?

    David (correct me if I'm wrong) Hawley